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10/28/15

Capture Your Grief, Day 28: Reach Out

October 27, 2015 | Home | Longview, Texas

Day 28: Reach Out

This whole month has been a process of reaching out for me, starting with our initial blog post in September for anyone who was willing to read and allowing them into the world we were living. I've been amazed at how the response has been exponentially different than I even imagined it could be. This began as a a journey and a resolve to reach out to you, my readers, in the midst of my grief and touch some part of your life with the season of my own that may reflect in some way with yours; and has come to a close with a consistent reaching out from many of you back towards me. Every time I receive a text, an email, or a message on Facebook from someone who's taken a moment to visit my little corner of the internet, I am so humbled. That you in your own grief would reach out to me and remind me that I'm not alone; while also celebrating in the fact that you are coming to this realization yourself as you scroll through my posts...This is why we share. In my post about normalizing grief I talked a lot about how so much of this life we are struggling alongside one another but are blind to the community we would have, the support we would gain, if we could somehow learn to let each other in. This has been the beginning of that process for me. Writing in a coffee shop, on my lunch break, or at night before I turn down the click of my lamp, I sit behind a keyboard hidden just enough so that I feel brave. And I think that's alright for now, it's what I have to give at this point. One thing I've learned when it comes to reaching out, is that sometimes it looks like jumping and throwing yourself forward; and other times we just have to catch our balance before we can start to walk. A step at a time, a day at a time...a paragraph at a time. And that's okay.